Water Energy installs two waste water treatment plants in Alcar

Alcar Srl (Lecce, Italy), one of the most important European manufacturers of light and medium heavy components for agricultural, earth moving, and lifting equipment, decided to replace its outdated waste water treatment plant.

Water Energy installed two identical plants at the premises of Alcar. The first one is linked to the liquid coating line and the second one, which was installed more recently, is linked to the powder coating line. The two systems differ only in the capacity of their settling tanks, since the amount of fluid coming from the liquid painting plant is greater than that of the powder painting one.

“The process of treating water from these coating units,” states Water Energy owner Tommaso Ponara, “starts in the booths themselves, each featuring a pump that recovers the fluid and sends it to the flotation unit. We have equipped Alcar with two sludge separators from our Skimmerflot 5000 and 8000 series, which carry out the molecular separation of water and sludge to enable the removal of the supernatant sludge through a continuous flow skimming system. The sludge is then collected in special draining containers.

In order to facilitate the separation of pollutants and the floatation of sludge, the system uses micronised air injected directly both inside the feeding circuit and at the bottom of the reaction tank. We also provide Alcar with specific chemical products to ensure maximum system efficiency: flocculants, denaturants, sanitisers removing organic contaminants, and defoamers are all part of the service package that Water Energy offers to its customers.

The use of these specific products, especially the denaturants for the denaturation of the paint dispersed in the booths’ waste water due to the elimination of the overspray and the flocculants for the aggregation of the denatured coatings in the form of floating flakes, guarantee many advantages. These include, above all, a high cleanliness degree of the booths, an 80% sludge recovery rate, and a sludge moisture degree below 40%.

Management is simplified by the possibility of collecting the sludge residues directly in specific big bags ready for disposal, whereas the booths’ water is disposed of annually.”

After the separation of sludge from water, the latter is recirculated to the booths and mixed with fresh water.

Read the full article on ipcm® International Paint&Coating Magazine n. 60.